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NAACP issues travel advisory for Missouri

For the first time, the NAACP has issued a travel advisory for a state, warning travelers and residents about possible discrimination and racist attacks. The Missouri NAACP circulated the advisory in June, and it was adopted by national delegates last week. Video by Jill Toyoshiba and Ian Cummings.

For the first time, the NAACP has issued a travel advisory for a state, warning travelers and residents about possible discrimination and racist attacks. The Missouri NAACP circulated the advisory in June, and it was adopted by national delegates last week. Video by Jill Toyoshiba and Ian Cummings. Jill Toyoshiba and Ian CummingsThe Kansas City Star

For the first time, the NAACP has issued a travel advisory for a state, warning travelers and residents about possible discrimination and racist attacks. The Missouri NAACP circulated the advisory in June, and it was adopted by national delegates last week. Video by Jill Toyoshiba and Ian Cummings. Jill Toyoshiba and Ian CummingsThe Kansas City Star

The warning isn’t a ban, and doesn’t tell people to stop traveling to Missouri — only to be careful. But some would-be visitors, both black and white, are thinking twice about setting foot in the Show-Me State.

Among them is Tamara James, of Indiana, who as an employee at a national package delivery company occasionally has opportunities to apply for jobs in different states. James, who is black, wrote in an email Thursday to The Star that Missouri had been on her list of options but that she would have to reconsider that.

“I would not say that we would not move to Missouri,” she wrote. “However, with the current leadership in our country and the more revelations of police brutality we are skeptical of moving to areas where we will suffer more because we are minorities.”

The travel advisory caused a storm on social media, where civic leaders weighed in and others debated Missouri’s place in the national landscape of prejudice.

Missouri state Rep. Jon Carpenter, a Kansas City Democrat, posted a news story about the travel advisory on Facebook, writing, “This should be concerning to all Missourians who care about equality.”

On Twitter, some people sarcastically wondered whether it was time to bring back “The Negro Motorist Green Book,” a Jim Crow-era guidebook for African-American travelers published from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Many pointed out that Missouri’s problems were neither new nor unique in the United States. But the travel advisory, first issued in June by the state-level Missouri NAACP before being taken up by the national organization, had brought attention to the issue.

The travel advisory was voted on last week by national NAACP delegates and is scheduled to go to the group’s national board for ratification in October.